Centenarians celebrated for their military service.
Two World War II veterans who’ve reached the century mark were honored on Friday at a luncheon hosted by Coconut Grove’s Coral Reef Yacht Club.
Joan S. Mueller, 100, began her military service in 1944 as a member of the newly formed Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, or WAVES, a branch of the Navy established to enable women to serve in uniform. Mueller graduated from what is now known as Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire. She turned down a commission as an officer to become an enlisted parachute rigger for the Navy, declaring that she wanted to be physically active in support of the war effort.
“I didn’t want some desk job,” she says. “I wanted to do something physical. Really do something!” After the war, she was transferred, as a civilian, to serve in Yokohama, Japan. Of her time in service, Mueller said “I’m just sorry I never got to jump out of an airplane and try one of the parachutes I packed!”
Mueller is a decades-long member of the Coconut Grove Sailing Club and Coral Reef Yacht Club. In the 1960s, she established the first sailing program for women at Coral Reef. She founded the Homecoming Regatta for youth sailors in 1971, which was succeeded by today’s Orange Bowl International Youth Regatta. Mueller was a competitive sailor in her own right and was the first winner of the modern George Washington Birthday Regatta held by The Barnacle Society, in 1996.
Also honored was Angelo Demos. Demos left the University of Pennsylvania to join General George Patton’s Third Army as an infantryman just prior to the Battle of the Bulge, late in 1944. His European service continued as the Army entered Germany and he served in the post-war occupation army. Demos remained in the Army Reserve as an officer and reached the rank of Colonel. He is a member of the 35th Infantry Division’s Hall of Fame and celebrated his 100th birthday in October.
Less than 100,000 of the nearly 16.4 million American men and women who served in World War II are still living, according to the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs.
